I never told you what I’d done. For one thing, if you’d known you would never have allowed me to come to Earth with you. I sometimes regret that decision. If you’d known, would you have come back to me? Would you have tried harder to survive?
I do not blame you. You’d given too much, for too long, and if at the end you made a decision that led to death and, perhaps, a measure of peace, who can judge you? Not me, certainly.
You went up on the Citadel and you died and became a hero for uncounted billions, but you were mine first. You were mine and I was yours, since the day I thought you were a hallucination and you sav
That which was once Shepard is, in a distant fashion, glad that they are all dead now. The asari had taken a long, long time – almost two thousand years. But now they are all gone, all those who remembered who it had once been.
The asari had spent centuries talking to its various avatars, reciting from memory parts of its former life. She had been trying to make it remember who it had once been, and it worked, in a fashion. It remembered being human. Vaguely.
But those memories are fading now, more than a century since the death of the last person who had known Shepard, and it is time.
That which was once Shepard awakens to its true pur
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 11 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 11
She doesn’t know who asked Chakwas for the medicine, but she arrives with a hypo tucked into the sleeve of her dress uniform. They’re all in dress uniform. It’s simpler than sitting still for an hour while Traynor or Ash covers every scar and scab revealed by her only formal dress.
Garrus is wearing civilian turian dress, the kind she’s seen him in so rarely, and looks good enough to eat. Tali disappeared into the sterile box she’d carted into the office for a few hours and comes out looking like a million credits in an environment suit that shimmers violet and silver and green. Her mask gives the impression of t
I remember my last glimpse of you. You were so tired. You were soaked in the blood of our enemies, and you were so damn tired it broke my heart to look at you.
You told me that you loved me. Then you told me to leave, that you needed to know that someone would get out alive. You had no right! No right to ask me to live for you. Not when you went and died for all of them! You could have lived. You could have lived for me, and we would have been happy. For a time.
In my dreams you come to me victorious and alive, and we laugh and toast victory and I wash the blood from you and we are both safe. Safe and beloved and unharmed. And your hands are
The plaque with your name on it is worn smooth. I’ve touched it so many times, all I have left of you, and the floor in front of the memorial wall is marked where I’ve paced.
They call you a hero, say you saved the world. As if that helps? As if I should be grateful? I don’t care. I never asked you to be a hero. I never cared that much about the world.
I cared about you, and us, and the future we might have had together.
Let them keep their honors, their ceremonies and medals and endless celebrations. Let them have the world. The price was too high. I want it back.
I want you back.
I want to sit with you in the observation l
He’s so pale, is my first thought. But he’s always pale. He’s practically famous for it.
Still...that’s the first thought I have when I see him stretched out on the ground next to the old man.
So pale. So still.
God don’t let him be dead.
I push my way past the incompetents who should have been making sure this didn’t happen and fall to my knees.
He’s sleeping. He’s not dead. I hold on to the thought with all my might, but it slips away under the onslaught of the utter stillness that greets me when I look at him.
I don’t know how long I’ve been kneeling there, afraid to touch him. If
I could touch you, as you sleep. But you sleep so lightly and so seldom that I’ll not chance waking you.
So I lie here and watch the moonlight gild your face.
The face of my love – poetry, it has always seemed to me, in the shape of flesh. Not that most people would agree. But then, most people lack the good sense God promised a doorknob, and we’ve never cared overmuch what they think.
You’re too thin, love. I stopped asking you to eat more months ago – it serves no purpose. You could eat all day and not replace half of what is taken.
I hate this. Hate watching you fade even as you lay in my arms, even as you ho
Spare your prayers. I don’t want them, and he doesn’t need them.
And don’t go crying all over this hollow shell of what I once was. That will help neither of us. You should have stopped this. You could have stopped it.
But you didn’t and I was left to pick up the shattered pieces on this field of blood and tears, and put your world together.
What if I don’t want to? I saw him fall, you know. But I had a job to do, and it was awhile before I could find him again.
And I held him in my arms and I fought to keep from crying, because he didn’t like it when I cried. He thought it was silly. But I wanted to. And d
Senseless Act of Beauty by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
Senseless Act of Beauty
I watched from afar as he fell, and my heart ripped down the middle.
I ran, of course, but it was too late. Too late by far. I was in time to hold him as his last breath fled him like a craven coward. Just barely.
I watched as his eyes dulled, became a washed-out shadow of their former scarlet glory, and the hand that clenched on my robe went slack and fell away.
And then I knew pain. Crucio, Incendio, all were old friends. None could compare to this. None could even come close to this. The emptiness, the utter and complete desolation of knowing that his touch will never be mine again.
The complete and utter devastation of all that I am and w
If I could give you the world by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
If I could give you the world
If I could give you the world on a silver platter, I would do so in an instant, and yet somehow I know that you would not accept it if I tried.
You do not want the world, or gold or jewels or fine things.
You just want peace and that, I am powerless to give you.
The most I can do is to hold you when your nightmares come, and hope that somehow you know that I am there. That someone in this travesty still remembers, and cares.
And I will never leave you, my love, never abandon you to capricious fate or desert the haven of your warm arms. Where I am safe, even as you are safe with me.
Here, in the perfect symmetry of limbs and hearts, nothing of
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 8 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 8
“Well.” Ash paused. “That’s…”
“Yeah. That’s something, allright.” Shepard glances at Joker, who’s staring at the datapad. “Joker, are you okay?”
He looks up at her and his face is streaked with tears.
“I’ll be fine, Commander,” he says and wipes his face roughly. “So how are we going to do this?”
Shepard is so proud of them in that moment that she could burst. Nobody hesitates for as much as a second before offering their own suggestions.
“First question,” Garrus says, quieting everyone down. “Do we still have the co-ordina
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 6 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 6
There is silence in her room when she has finished explaining the Catalyst and his three choices. Garrus isn’t looking at her, and she is suddenly afraid. It’s been three years since she last had to face the world without Garrus by her side.
The empty silence stretches and stretches, and she resists the urge to fidget.
“This is why you called yourself a coward?” he asks finally.
She nods, empty of words, and he snorts.
“What were your orders, Shepard?”
“Stop the Reapers,” she says.
“Your orders were to destroy the Reapers. By any means necessary. Your Alliance had no business putting that
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 5 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 5
She gives him ten minutes to get away, then gets out of bed again. Her room is on the top floor; she spots a roof access after only a few minutes of searching. The stairs are hell. She’s barefoot and her legs are wobbly and painful, but she makes it to the top. The door is supposed to be locked, but apparently it was a victim of the Crucible pulse and she pushes it open quietly.
From the roof she can see the Citadel spread out below her and, through the arms, she catches glimpses of Earth. It looks calm and peaceful from up here, though she knows half the planet lies in ruins.
She saved the Earth; she knows that. Millions, billions are
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 4 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 4
Shepard goes back to sleep after Joker leaves, exhausted. When she wakes up, Garrus asleep in the chair. She wonders if he was there the whole time, if he has been keeping watch over her while she slept.
He must have been; he never even stirs as she quietly, cautiously gets out of the bed and stands, barefoot in a hospital gown, on the floor. Her legs are spaghetti-weak and sharp jagged bursts of pain mark every step, but she makes it to the door silent and undetected. The hallway is quiet, but she hears voices coming from the left, so she goes that way and finds a nurses’ station. Three asari and a turian, quietly discussing the condit
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 3 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 3
Garrus comes back, and brings a doctor with him. She’s an asari, young and slender as they all seemed to be with the palest blue skin Shepard had ever seen and grass-green eyes.
“Commander Shepard,” she says, smiling. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you awake. I’m sure Mr. Vakarian’s told you it was touch and go for a while there.”
“He did. Doctor…”
“Shira,” she supplies.
“Doctor Shira, when can I get out of here? I have things to do.”
“You have nothing to do but rest, Commander. For at least a few more days, but more likely weeks. I can&rs
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 2 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 2
When she wakes again things are clearer. Garrus is still by the side of her bed. He's reading a book, but when her eyes open he looks up at her immediately.
"Back again?"
She nods.
"How long was I out?"
"This time? Three days. Before that, you were in and out for about two weeks."
"Two weeks? I was out that long?"
"Shepard," Garrus says chidingly and strokes her cheek. "You were badly burned over eighty percent of your body. You broke almost every bone you had. The doctors thought you were going to die every day for a solid week. Two weeks is nothing."
"I should-" She moves to swing her feet off the bed but Garrus' hand comes down on h
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 1 by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Chapter 1
She wakes again in clean white sheets.
She tries to speak, brings forth only a pained hiss. It brings a reaction, though.
"Shepard."
Familiar voice. She smiles, and that hurt too. His hand closes over hers and that doesn't hurt at all.
"I came as soon as they told me. I've been waiting for you to wake up. You scared me, Shepard."
Her eyes weigh a ton, but she manages to look at him. Familiar, beloved face.
"Garrus." His name comes out softer than a whisper, barely even a breath. He leans forward and kisses her on the cheek.
"I'll go get a nurse."
Her hand clenches involuntarily and he stops mid-motion, looking back at her. Sits back d
A Measure of Peace, Prologue by ArcanaMortis, literature
Literature
A Measure of Peace, Prologue
She remembered...
She remembered a flash of light.
She remembered regret, and grief.
She remembered pain, and a long fall.
The pain was an old companion - she had lived with it for years. The fall, too, was familiar. Just so she had once fallen to land from the wreckage of her first ship.
She did not remember a landing.
****
Breathe.
Just Breathe.
The first breath was excruciating. She would have screamed if she could. She would have wept, but all her tears had burned away.
She could hear voices not far off. Calling to each other, searching for survivors.
"We have a live one! Careful, she's badly burned!"
A hand closed on hers.
T